Shades of Sexualization: When Sexualization Becomes Sexual Objectification

Abstract

Sexualization in mass media is a widespread phenomenon. Although sexualization and sexual objectification are often used as synonymous, they are two different concepts. Across two studies, we investigated how sexualization affects perceptions of women (Study 1) and men (Study 2) as sexual objects. Participants were asked to judge sexual objectification, competence, and sexiness of female and male models portrayed with different degrees of sexualization, namely, as Non-Revealing (dressed), merely Revealing (undressed), and Sexualized Revealing (undressed and provocative). The results of both studies showed that as the level of sexualization increased so did participants’ perceptions of the targets as sexual objects. However, the level of sexualization affected perceived competence and sexiness differently depending on the target’s gender. Male models’ competence decreased as the level of sexualization increased, whereas female models portrayed as merely Revealing and as Sexualized Revealing were judged as equally incompetent. Male targets’ sexiness was not affected by the level of portrayals’ sexualization, whereas Sexualized Revealing portrayals enhanced the perceived sexiness of female targets. Finally, in Study 2, the results showed that male targets in Sexualized Revealing portrayals were judged as less masculine. Our findings suggest that sexualization contributes similarly to the perception of both women and men as sexual objects but affects other variables depending on the target’s gender. Our work extends previous literature and informs us about the consequences that sexualization of men and women have on others’ judgments.

Full text

ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Shades of Sexualization: When Sexualization Becomes
Sexual Objectification
Fabio Fasoli
1,2
&Federica Durante
1
&Silvia Mari
1
&Cristina Zogmaister
1
&
Chiara Volpato
1
Published online: 15 July 2017
#Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017
Abstract Sexualization in mass media is a widespread
phenomenon. Although sexualization and sexual objecti-
fication are often used as synonymous, they are two dif-
ferent concepts. Across two studies, we investigated how
sexualization affects perceptions of women (Study 1) and
men (Study 2) as sexual objects. Participants were asked
to judge sexual objectification, competence, and sexiness
of female and male models portrayed with different de-
grees of sexualization, namely, as Non-Revealing
(dressed), merely Revealing (undressed), and Sexualized
Revealing (undressed and provocative). The results of
both studies showed that as the level of sexualization
increased so did participants’perceptions of the targets
as sexual objects. However, the level of sexualization
affected perceived competence and sexiness differently
dependingonthetarget’s gender. Male models’compe-
tence decreased as the level of sexualization increased,
whereas female models portrayed as merely Revealing
and as Sexualized Revealing were judged as equally in-
competent. Male targets’sexiness was not affected by the
level of portrayals’sexualization, whereas Sexualized
Revealing portrayals enhanced the perceived sexiness of
female targets. Finally, in Study 2, the results showed
that male targets in Sexualized Revealing portrayals were
judged as less masculine. Our findings suggest that
sexualization contributes similarly to the perception of
both women and men as sexual objects but affects other
variables depending on the target’s gender. Our work
extends previous literature and informs us about the con-
sequences that sexualization of men and women have on
others’judgments.
Keywords Sexualization .Objectification .Competence .
Gender differences .Masculinity .Mass media
Mass media often portray men and women in a sexualized
way or as sexual objects (Ward 2016). The sexualization of
men and women is often used to catch customers’attention by
enhancing beauty and activating sexual associations (Gill
2008;Lazar2006). In fact, sexualization is a phenomenon that
implies attention on the person’s appearance and thus can
assume different shades: It can be merely beauty-based, name-
ly, focusing on physical beauty, or sexually-based, namely,
focusing on the person’s sexual features and expected desires
by implying his/her sexual readiness (Morris and Goldenberg
2015). Sexual objectification,instead, is defined as a represen-
tation of a person as a mere body/object for others’sexual
desires (Fredrickson et al. 1998). Although sexual objectifica-
tion and sexualization have been often used as synonymous
and examined as if they were the same phenomenon, they
refer to different concepts (Ward 2016). The present work
aims to investigate whether female and male portrayals that
differ in their degree of sexualization elicit different percep-
tions of the target as a sexual object, further exploring the
impact of sexualization on perceptions that usually go hand-
in-hand with such a phenomenon.
*Fabio Fasoli
f.fasoli@surrey.ac.uk
*Federica Durante
federica.durante@unimib.it
1
Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Piazza
dell’Ateneo Nuovo 1, 20126 Milan, Italy
2
Present address: School of Psychology, University of Surrey,
Guildford GU2 7XH, UK
Sex Roles (2018) 78:338–351
DOI 10.1007/s11199-017-0808-1
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